José Gardeazabal Emerging writer from Portugal

'Good literature makes you believe. By reading you gradually begin to accept the reality of a text. Conversely, from the writer’s point of view, the process of writing is a process of doubt.'

José Gardeazabal (1966) was born in Lisbon, where he is based today. He has lived, studied and worked in Luanda, Aveiro, Boston and Los Angeles. His first book História do século vinte (History of the Twentieth Century) was published in 2016 and earned the Imprensa Nacional Casa da Moeda/Vasco Graça Moura prize for poetry, having been praised by poet José Tolentino Mendonça as an "unusual, remarkable and fiery exercise that breaks new ground in literature." In 2016, he also published Dicionário de Ideias Feitas em Literatura (Dictionary of Ready-Made Thoughts in Literature), a collection of short prose. Trilogia do Olhar (A trilogy of Looking) is his first book of plays. Gardeazabal's first novel, Meio Homem, Metade, Baleia (Half Man, Half a Whale), has come out in 2018, and is currently being translated to Spanish for Kalandraka.

‘My writing is born from reading. My day begins with a reading session of an hour or two,’ José Gardeazabal explains. ‘I scribble in the margins, make notes on my computer, and I continue with that until the process has boiled down to only writing.’ Gardeazabal views reading as a process of believing. ‘Isn’t that right? Good literature makes you believe. By reading you gradually begin to accept the reality of a text. Conversely, from the writer’s point of view, the process of writing is a process of doubt. You invite the reader to question things. It’s as if you’re saying: “What if we abandon existing ideas and try out a new perspective”. That’s how I experience it anyway. I don’t want to write about what I fundamentally know, but about what I fundamentally don’t know.’